Hi, i am trying to finish this game model topology but having problems at the hair area. As you see on zbrush screens i have deep strokes on the hair part, and was curious how it was going to look like (after normal mapping ) if i had a round mesh retopologized at the hair area. So i decided to get hard corners and edges, and tried to get the overal shape in more detail in that hair area. But when UV mapping i am having problem getting a good one. Do you think hard edges and corners are causing this or is it the uneven sized polygons, hard edges and bad edge flow?

What is your suggestion on making the hair? I didnt detail the naked body on lower body, so i thought it would be useless to get the head retopped without the hair. I am trying to go one piece with every part of the body. ( Don't know if this is good for game engines and geo). So i am open to suggestions on makin the hair.

A simple round mesh wouldn't look good, as normal maps do not displace the geometry, they only change the light behaves when it hits the surface. Therefore, if you were to look at the front of your character in game, all you would see is strangely shaded round mesh. What you have now seems decent.

you can make the hair with a bit more detail just to help the Normal map out a bit...add extra geo but only what you can get away with. If its actually going in a game engine then you'll need to fins out specifics...if its purely for rendering purposes then go the who hog, more polys and a dispacement map.

If I were to give you ten pence worth of advice, ad an extra loop from the corner of the mouth so you have 3 quads there instead of two, so 1 top one middle and one lower, as I have found over the years it eliminates probs when opening the mouth a bit better too.

Also the loops from the labial nasal area are very wide, I would bring those in a little more, that way you can add another loop to flow across the bridge of the nose, around the cheek and under the chin.

again great start...

edit: As for the poles, they're in good shape there. Alot of people (mainly inexperienced and copycat parrots) tend to shudder at the sight of them and scream hellfire. But if the loops are correct anatomically then poles become just part of the geo as normal then a good artist is able to work with them without even worrying about them

I added a few details on the geo, but I'm not very happy about what I did, especially on the area around the cheekbones (highlighted with green). Something is wrong, but I can't figure out what? What do you think about the loops from the labial nasal now, I think it's still to wide?

this is page 4 and the mesh has become more refined if you read it from start.

Also reference is gonna be your biggest help for the positioning of any of the anatomy. Asking me wont help as I dont know what you are looking at. Again, poles dont really matter once you get the loops right. So just concentrate on the forms right now and proportions, once you have that sorted the rest should fall into place

I was at the European Championships in Poland to support Croatian team, so I was quite absent. Thanks Jay, I started to read your thread, there are a lot of good stuff there. I'll definitely read the entire thread.

In the meantime I started a new model, I couldn't wait to come back and open Maya. Maya junky!! I know there is still much work to do and there are a lot of bad things in the mesh but...

I'm practising on stylized character heads. I wanted to get some tips and pointers for my topology. I'm new to this so I know i have mistakes. I'm here to see how many mistake i've made and how to fix them. I've done two different character heads. Is one better than the other or do they both need alot of work?

Mike. Looks much better. I think smoothing out the polys to eliminate lumpiness will help tremendously. Als your symmetry seems to have a seam in it. As for the flow it is decent. Not perfect but better. You did a good job on the redo.

Thanks chav, but just to be sure, are you talking about the three images above or the three images below? The reason why I say that is because i created my own thread earlier this week with the three images below and was wondering if you saw it. And so I thought you were talking about the three images at the top when you said (good job on the redo).